Pakui Hardware & Catherine Malabou : Hésitation programmée et imagination transcendantale – ENS Ulm

Pakui Hardware
Hesitant Hand. The Programmed, The Spontaneous

Over the past years we have been gradually delegating our routine tasks to our tools: the private environment and the industry is becoming increasingly automated, when people both at home and at work act among programmable non-human beings. In contemporary theory this automation was named a fourth technological revolution, when machines operate with each other in a network without a visible human intervention. Mechanical human work is substituted here by the robotic choreography, while the man took more virtual role in the system by being responsible for programming and providing connectivity and energy supply for their automated colleagues. It is an autonomous ecosystem, a post-human collective which is rapidly expanding by including more and more mechanical beings.
If our bodies are too slow comparing to tireless automated efficiency, perhaps our biological limitations can bring something valuable to the table? Could limitation become virtue in this post-human environment?

Pakui Hardware is the name coined by curator Alex Ross (NY) for the collaborative artist duo Neringa Cerniauskaite and Ugnius Gelguda, which began in 2014. The title Pakui Hardware refers to Pakui – special attendant of Hawaiian Goddess, who could circle Oahu island six times in a day. Thus Pakui Hardware is high-speed and brand politics as mythic semio-commodity as well as the desire to transcend the material limitations. Semio-Capital meets materiality.
The duo’s work spans around the relationship between materiality, technology, and economy. How technology is shaping current economy and the physical reality itself, including the human body. In relation to the velocity of technological development, the matter becomes both an obstacle and a vehicle. These questions are analyzed through such examples as High Frequency Trading, Prometheanism, synthetic biology and new materiality.
http://www.pakuihardware.org

Catherine Malabou est ancienne élève de l’École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud. Elle débute sa carrière universitaire comme maître de conférences à l’université Paris Ouest – Nanterre, La Défense (1995-2011). Elle est ensuite nommée professeure au Centre for Modern European Philosophy de l’Université de Kingston (Royaume-Uni). Depuis 2017, elle est également professeure en Littérature comparée et European Languages and Studies à l’Université de Californie à Irvine. Elle partage son enseignement entre les deux institutions. Elle enseigne également l’été comme professeure à l’European Graduate School (Saas Fee).
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Malabou

Entrée libre et sans inscription
Intervenants : Catherine Malabou et Pakui Hardware
Date et heure : 18 décembre 2017 – 14h-16h
Lieu : École Normale Supérieure – salle Dussane
45, rue d’Ulm, Paris 75005